Russia-Ukraine war: Live updates

Fighting is continuing to rage in Ukraine. It has been over 70 days since Russian forces launched a full-scale offensive into Ukrainian territories. This article from scheerpost is somewhat lengthy, but outstanding. It attempts to investigate the origins of the war. It's amazing how western media just conveniently gloss over how this got started, as if Russia just suddenly decided to take over the world like a thunderbolt on a clear day. There are no objective reasons for this conflict, no national interests at play. Only pure abstract evil.

However, I disagree slightly with the article. I believe that the US has not exerted very much pressure on Ukraine to reject the Minsk Protocol. The Biden government is focused on economic recovery, and sanctioning Russia at this point would be insane. Maybe Biden is stupid? It is more likely what I previously stated in my post here.

Zelensky's hands were tied by nationalist forces, which prevented him from dealing with Russia in a manner that may have averted this war. Neo-Nazis have a long history in Ukraine, dating all the way back to their collaboration with Hitler during the Second World War. Look up Stefan Bandera. In 2014 he was proclaimed a national hero by the Ukraine. In 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to split seized Poland roughly along the Bug River, with the Germans claiming everything west and the Soviets claiming everything east. Stalin personally drew the dividing line that divided Poland. Initially drawn to the west of Warsaw, he decided to extend it east of the city and Lublin, granting Germany control of the majority of Poland's most densely inhabited and industrialized provinces. Stalin desired Lvov and its vast oil reserves, as well as Lithuania, which abuts East Prussia. Thus, WESTERN UKRAINIANS ARE EASTERN POLES.

Instantly, a campaign of widespread persecution began in the newly seized territory. Around 13.5 million Polish citizens who were occupied by the military were converted to new Soviet subjects. A wave of arrests and quick executions marked the start of a Soviet campaign of political murders and other forms of repression directed at Polish authorities such as military officers, police officers, and clergymen. Between 1939 and 1941, the Soviet NKVD deported hundreds of thousands of people from eastern Poland to Siberia and other remote parts of the Soviet Union in four major waves, until Germany terminated its earlier pact with the Soviet Union and invaded the Soviet Union under the code name Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941.

Numerous Poles supported the Germans because they despised the Russians, who were dominated by Jewish leadership. Andriy Biletsky, a far-right politician and leader of the political organization National Corps, formed the Azov brigade. Andriy Parubiy, creator of Svoboda and the Patriots of Ukraine, the latter of which evolved into the Azov Battalion of today. These men are all neo-nazis, but their primary targets are Jews, Roma gypsies, and LGBTQ and women's rights advocates.

As a result, Zelensky chose to wage war with Russia in order to eliminate the nationalist elements while also gaining votes and power. Whatever members of Azov (nationalist forces battalion) are still alive at the conclusion of this war will be moved to various European nations and utilized as a "white ISIS" terrorist outfit against Russia. Azov has already claimed the lives of tens of thousands of civilians. Zelensky has directed Azov to kill anyone who attempts to surrender, which Azov has been doing.

In Russian culture, Ukrainians, or "Malorussians", are traditionally viewed as extremely stubborn. This is a known quantity, so to speak. Back in 2015, there was a joke about the war: Donbass Militiaman Ivan shouts at Ukrainian soldier Taras, “Give up, you’re surrounded!”, and Taras answers: “Russians don’t surrender!”. Fighting Slavs is hard.

The situation in Ukraine: current status

This guy Scott Ritter, covers the Russia military operation pretty well:

Dude makes a lot of interesting points. A lot of people have no understanding of military science at all. Thus their opinions are stupid and far off-base. As far as I can tell, the Russian General Staff was prepared for three or four scenarios, which included Kyiv backing down (implying a timeline of a few days), the Ukrainian Army disintegrating (implying a timeline of around six weeks) and the war going on as a real war (implying a timeline of roughly six months of active large-scale hostilities). Currently, the third scenario seems to be implemented.

From what I understand, the Russian General Staff did expect a swift Ukrainian surrender as “Plan A”. That doesn’t mean that Plans B, C, D and E were made up ad hoc or given a lower priority. One possible outcome the Kremlin probably expected was a speedy capitulation and the installation of a moderately pro-Russian regime in Kyiv, basically a return to the status quo antebellum of 2010-2013. I have heard from reliable sources that the plans were adjusted on day 2 or 3 of the war when it became obvious that this would not happen.

I had speculated pre-invasion that the most likely scenario was a limited Russian offensive to seize the Donbas and create a land bridge to Crimea. That now seems to be Russia’s primary goal, but in the early days of the war it appeared that the Russian military was attempting to surround Kiev. There are now commentators, such as Scott Ritter and Soldo, who insist that the forces deployed around Kiev were simply a feint to tie down the Ukrainian military while Russian and DNR/LNR forces made progress in the East. They herald this as a brilliant example of “maneuver warfare.” The goal was simply to prevent Ukraine from reinforcing its forces in the East. This makes a lot of sense, Russia never initiated airstrikes or artillery bombardment around Kiev on the scale that I would expect to support a serious advance. And when Putin announced the so-called “special military operation,” he framed it as being focused on the Donbas.

I think it is too early to judge the Kiev operation, as its worth will be determined by the outcome of the Battle for Donbass. It is, however, noteworthy that we haven’t heard much from the Ukrainian Army’s Operational Command “North” since the Russian withdrawal. I have seen no evidence of the “victorious” Ukrainian troops around Kiev being able to reinforce other parts the East or even staging some sort of counter-offensive. They don’t seem to be in the condition to do much of anything.

The Western media idea that Ukraine would fall within a week was based on two misconceptions. The first one is mistaking the Armed Forces of Ukraine of 2022 for those of 2014. In 2014, Ukrainian forces in Crimea either changed sides or laid down their arms with no resistance, and even before the (extremely limited) Russian intervention the Donbass militias, who at that point were made up mostly of middle-aged veterans and volunteers, managed to rout vastly superior Ukrainian army units. The Ukrainian government admitted that at that point they had no more than ~5000 combat-ready soldiers in the standing army. The Ukrainian Army of 2022, however, are a huge force (the largest in Europe, aside from Russia) in a militarized society, juiced up on eight years of NATO supplies and training, and, of course, their own efforts. The regular army is supported by a vast network of paramilitary structures in every city in the east of the country, including the formal integration of highly motivated ideological formations made up of political extremists.

The second reason why so many people seemed to expect a swift Russian victory is that they judged the possible Russian performance based on the experiences of the last Western-led wars. I maintain that if Russia had unleashed a hellish Shock & Awe campaign in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Army would have disintegrated on impact, which is also exactly what it looked like in the first 12 hours of the war. Later we learned that the Armed Forces of Russia executed fewer missile and airstrikes in a month than the US did in a few days in Iraq. In living memory, no Western nation has fought a war “on its own soil”, or at least in a location where the lives of the local population mattered to them. They do not understand why Russia wouldn’t just flatten every city in Eastern Ukraine. The official (and unofficial) Russian position is that the Russian-Ukrainian population of these territories is held hostage by an irrational nationalist regime in Kiev. Of course, within such a paradigm it doesn’t make much sense to reduce population centers to rubble.

With all that said, I do, however, believe that there were also mistakes in the Russian General Staff regarding the expectation of mass surrenders. Either these were based on the outdated Crimean experience, or on bad intelligence. I tend to think it was the latter, as Russian intelligence seems to have suffered several huge failures, certainly more than the military. My understanding is that operational command in the initial phase of the conflict was held by officers with combat experience in Syria — which makes sense, as that is the “freshest” combat experience available to the Armed Forces of Russia, but it also led to several costly mistakes that were later corrected, e.g. the large military convoys that were appropriate in a desert area with a technologically inferior enemy, but vastly inappropriate in urban or forest areas with an enemy who has a virtually endless supply of ATGMs. Russian vanguard troops outpacing supply lines in the first days is also an established fact and this led to a majority of the casualties in the earliest phase of the war. This, too, was corrected, and doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore.

The criticism of the FSB seems justified too. There is this persistent myth about Russian intelligence being extraordinarily powerful (manipulating elections in the US, causing Brexit, etc), but the reality looks different. I never gave credence to the claims that Russia had either interfered in the election tabulation or that it had significantly shaped public discourse in the United States. Overall, there seem to have been leaks to the Ukrainian side, although this could also have come directly from Western intelligence agencies. In any case, the FSB & SBU were, to a large extent, a single structure until late 2013, and the FSB seems to have done way less to “purge” its ranks of possible moles than the Ukrainians.

Regarding logistics and vehicle losses, Western analysts have made some ridiculous assessments. The loss of BTRs without loss of life is not really a problem. There are tens of thousands of those things in Russia. It's basically a genocide of “Late Soviet Tech". The attrition is extreme in material terms, but it doesn’t matter, as the supplies are basically infinite. The Armed Forces of Russia also seem to be holding back newer and better vehicles. E.g. I’ve only seen the T-90 two or three times on photos so far and the modernized BMP-1AM “Basurmanin” only once.

Wars are generally just means of getting rid of all the old military equipment and ammunitions that are expiring, too old to store! All the *new* NATO countries are giving their old Soviet era equipment to Ukraine’s war effort with the US telling them they can upgrade to new equipment purchases. US normally picks some poor country to invade and dump bombs on every decade before the expiration date arrives on the missiles and ammunitions.

Apparently Russia never realized how important it is to use modern ammunitions and about half their missiles are duds or never get anywhere near their target, lots just plop into the ground a few hundred meters from the launchers… beyond the poor manufacturing and crappy delivered equipment and supplies, how much can be pocketed by everyone in the supply chain.

It seems that the most decisive victories for Ukraine have been in the area of molding international perception. Looking at not just the traditional Western media landscape but also the social-media commons of e.g. Twitter and Facebook, one is tempted to conclude that “Russians can’t meme.” In times of war, PR/propaganda and intelligence work merge into one big chaotic maelstrom of lies and information management. The Kremlin’s “media people” are already pretty bad in times of peace, but in the current situation it has become clear that they are terrifyingly unsuited for their jobs. I saw this coming, to be honest. What I didn’t see coming is how strong the grassroots replacement for the “official” people would be. It really looks like the people tasked with courting Ukrainian elites on behalf of Russia have failed miserably, or, more likely, didn’t do their job at all and just pocketed the money. This first became apparent (in my opinion) in 2014 when it turned out that the “Create pro-Russian movements in Ukraine” department at whatever government agency was responsible for that didn’t do anything and all the actual pro-Russian organizations were grassroots. It looks like the situation hasn’t improved at all.

Much of this will become public knowledge only after the war (or never), but it’s really crazy what people are achieving with zero resources running on pure enthusiasm. Crowdsourced Russian OSINT is in direct communication with the Armed Forces, providing public geolocation and other services. There are several Telegram bots where pro-Russian locals (or simply locals who don’t like being used as human shields) can send coordinates and photos of Ukrainian targets like strongpoints, ambushes, hidden repair workshops, artillery positions, etc. The Novorossiya underground also actively supports the Russian war effort with intel. There are many examples like this of “media” warping into something physical, something kinetic. A few well-placed photoshopped images actually managed to cause real-life panic several times. The “red mark” thing, a rumor among Ukrainians that “traitors” and “saboteurs” were marking buildings to be bombed with tags or lasers, distracted Ukrainian authorities and security forces for a whole month — and it was started by a Donbass activist.

When it comes to international “information warfare”, there is quite literally nothing. If the Russian government had the foresight and capacity to put intelligent young people in charge of its intelligence and information policies, everything would look very different and, who knows, maybe this war could have been avoided in the first place.

I don’t know how much impact the Ukrainian social media success really has on the military situation. I honestly don’t believe that it’s a lot. People in the West are generally more gullible when it comes to media than Russians; they largely believe whatever they’re told.

In any case, going off the deep end with regards to propaganda may just turn out to be a mistake for Kiev. You already have Presidential advisors commenting on clips that are very clearly authentic and filmed by Ukrainian soldiers on Ukrainian positions complaining that they aren’t being given the means to more effectively fight Russians, and claiming that these clips are staged and the Ukrainians in them are actually POWs forced to tell lies about their officers abandoning them. But these soldiers have families and friends. The 3000-4000 Ukrainian POWs who don’t exist according to Kiev also have families and friends. So do the thousands upon thousands of Ukrainian soldiers who were KIA. There are protests at recruitment centers in Western Ukraine, people’s phones are being searched and confiscated if they read the “wrong” Telegram channels in Nikolayev. It’s extremely hard to keep up this disinfo regime. Kiev had remarkable success in unifying the information stream and e.g. keeping information about damage from missile strikes to a minimum. But the worse things get, the harder this will be. And when the cracks start to show, all the Western PR agencies in the world won’t be able to reconcile the lie and the reality on the ground.

What’s actually the most worrying thing here is Western leadership ostensibly “getting high on their own supply”. If intelligence agencies, whom I assume to have a realistic picture, withhold information from “policymakers” and the latter as well as “thought leaders” base their reasoning on laughably wrong propaganda takes written up by morons – stupid things can happen. But they may also not, because, it kind of doesn’t matter anyway.

I don’t know what is planned, but it’s becoming obvious that Kherson oblast and the parts of Zaporozhye oblast under Russian control are slowly being integrated into the Russian socio-economic sphere, so I believe some form of annexation or at least separation from the hypothetical rump state is likely. It kind of depends on what happens in Western Ukraine/Galicia. There are persistent rumors about Poland being interested in establishing control over some of its “historical territories”, and any kind of situation like this could lead to a sudden avalanche of forced territorial concessions.

The situation in Russia

The sanctions don't seem to be doing much anymore. Prices appear to be going back to normal

Many Russians with advanced degrees who work for foreign corporations have taken advantage of visa-free travel to former Russian republics such as Georgia and Armenia draining Russia of anyone with talents for developing the country… probably giving the US a few million more highly skilled people over the next decade. However, the fact is Russia anticipated sanctions months before the war and prepared. Russian oligarchs moved money through an informal payment system called Hawala. The Hawala payment system is a system that allows for the transfer of funds from one entity to another without actually moving any money. There is no record as it doesn't require documentation. In other words, Hawala allows individuals or entities to carry out transactions outside of traditional banking systems.

The proposed EU oil embargo seem like a sad joke. Oil is a global commodity and, as such, any oil not purchased from Russia will simply find a home elsewhere. All that loss of Russian oil on the world market would drive up the price of a barrel of oil. Poor countries would not be able to afford oil at $140 to $170 dollars a barrel. They would buy that discounted oil preventing that steep increase. That would increase transportation costs but I'm sure someone somewhere would buy it and help fill the gap along with China and India. And if not, the hammers Russia but it's also bad for the entire global economy. We already have one quarter of negative growth, one more quarter and we're officially in a recession. So it would be hardest on Russia but it would be bad for the entire world, and poor countries around the world would also be hammered.

The gas situation is another joke. Germany is going to ban Russian gas and import it from Hungary?

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/German-Energy-Giant-To-Pay-For-R...

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Gazprom-Says-Poland-B...